For Nicole Donahoo, the path to becoming an assistant professor at the BYU Marriott School of Business began with a breakup—an ordeal that spurred Donahoo to turn to the Lord for guidance. Since then, she’s learned that following the promptings of the Lord brings her joy, even when God’s plans are different from what she had in mind.
“I actually always tell people that I was tricked into doing accounting,” Donahoo says. When Donahoo returned home from her mission in Portugal for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was at the mercy of the class schedule arranged by her mother, a BYU Marriott MAcc alum. Donahoo—somewhat grudgingly—attended the accounting class that she had been signed up for. “My mother was right. I loved it,” Donahoo admits. So, she applied to the undergraduate program and later the graduate program in the School of Accountancy.
Things seemed to be lining up for Donahoo as she started her last year in the MAcc program: She had a job offer at a firm she liked, and she was dating a boy she was excited about. Then her boyfriend broke up with her. Upset, Donahoo turned to the Lord for solace, asking a friend to give her a priesthood blessing.
While receiving the blessing, Donahoo felt the impression that Heavenly Father wanted her to get a PhD and become a professor. “I called my best friend and was more upset about the fact that I had to go get a PhD than the fact that the boy had broken up with me,” she says. “I had other plans for where I saw my life going.”
Donahoo decided to begin applying to PhD programs, despite her misgivings. “When I interviewed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [UIUC], I felt very strongly that that’s where I needed to go,” she says. Donahoo was nervous about UIUC because there were fewer single members of the Church in the area. “I figured I would just stay single for my whole PhD, then hopefully find someone after I moved,” she recalls. “I ended up meeting my husband there, in our tiny little single adults branch of, like, ten people.”
Once she joined the PhD program, her initial reluctance gradually grew into excitement. “Heavenly Father knows me better than I know myself, and he knew being a professor would be a good fit for me,” Donahoo says. The PhD program also helped Donahoo realize her love of research.
Donahoo’s focus on interview-based research is, by her own admission, somewhat rare in the accounting field. She originally picked her research track half out of love for the subject and half out of spite, she jokes. “If Heavenly Father wanted me to get a PhD, I was at least going to research what I wanted to, even if I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to get a job with it.” Contrary to her own expectations, Donahoo found a mentor at UIUC who specialized in a similar area of research and helped her work toward her dream job: teaching at BYU Marriott.
After graduating from UIUC in 2024, Donahoo accepted a position at BYU Marriott as an assistant professor of accountancy. “I love working with the students in the accounting program,” she says. “They’re so smart and so committed that they make me step up my game, not only intellectually but also spiritually as well.”
Donahoo has found that her students are excited to connect with her and understand what she teaches them. “They’re hungry for gospel answers and truth, and they want that in class,” Donahoo says. “That means I have to stay on my A game—and I appreciate the challenge; it makes coming to work really fun.”
Donahoo hadn’t imagined that she would find so much passion and fun in her work when she originally received the prompting to pursue a PhD. “I’ve learned to listen to promptings and trust that God has a better plan for me than I have for myself,” Donahoo reflects. “He knows exactly what He’s doing.”